The Raven High

by Yuri Hamaganov

  “Some more of interesting events: the rampant piracy in space, the android uprising, and, of course, further progress in bio and nanotechnologies resulted in the growing number of the Changed people like me. That evolution, anthropogenic in this case, leads to the emergence of a new biological species, Homo sapiens mundi. And, finally, the most important date in the history of modern astronautics—January the second, 2080!”

  “Indeed? What was an important event on that day?” Arina Rodionovna asked, suppressing a laugh.

  “My birthday! In less than a week, I will turn seven!” A beaming Olga climbed to the control room. “All this will become mine!”

  “Yes, and the two of us will mark your birthday in grand style. All right, time for lunch. I’ve boiled Bavarian sausages with peas. Then an hour’s rest, then homework in electrical engineering, and in the evening we have a complex lesson.”

  * * *

  The speedometer showed one hundred thirty kilometers per hour. A small motorcycle rider swerved around the Arc de Triomphe and rushed down the Champs-Élysées and gunned her black-and-yellow Honda to one hundred forty. A swift look at the onboard computer showed that she had just four laps left. Her time was twenty minutes and forty-two seconds, the second best. The fashionable stores’ windows blended in solid lines of light on either side of the famous street. The cold night air whipped her face. Olga adroitly slipped around cars and taxis, keeping her e0ye on the flickering red Ducati in front of her.

  “And who will do your homework?”

  Arina’s voice rolled across the Parisian night sky like a peal of thunder. For a second, Olga raised her eyes to the dark clouds. At that moment, cruising at one hundred fifty-five kilometers per hour, her motorcycle crashed into a car that abruptly changed lanes. Olga was ejected from the seat. She flew twenty meters and smashed through the back window of a parked van. The collision was lethal: the simulator very realistically reproduced a ghastly screech of shattering bones.

  “In real life a collision like this would have broken your spine in several places. No helmet would save you. A just penalty for your unfulfilled homework, speeding, and deliberate violation of traffic rules.”

  Olga took off her toy helmet and gauntlets, touched her neck to make sure it wasn’t broken, and glanced at the display. Three minutes past one a.m., Moscow time. Yes, she had lost hours in the game. But what could she do if in the Paris rally the world around her changed so dramatically, sharpened her sensations, and the red Ducati ahead wouldn’t let her overtake it? But the nanny was implacable. Arina stared into the panoramic porthole with her back to the girl. She was angrier than usual.

  Olga ran up to the nanny and embraced her, looking up and cunningly trying to touch a sentimental chord in her soul. “I’m sorry—you aren’t angry with me, are you? Will you forgive me?”

  “Suppose I’ve forgiven you,” Arina said as she stepped away, then sat on the checkered floor mat, crossing her legs and taking up her habitual knitting. “Of course, I’ve forgiven you. I’m kindhearted and you abuse my weakness all the time.”

  “You distracted me! And breaking your neck is no fun, even in a game.”

  “That’s what I was after, my dear biker! The game simulator I built for you provides you entertainment in your free time. It’s not a distraction from studies. Now get ready—we’re in for a long lesson. Today, you must build a nanoconductor with two hundred fifty million molecules in just two hours and twenty minutes. It’s a more challenging task than racing about Paris!”

  Olga tried an aggrieved sigh, but seeing she couldn’t soften Arina’s heart she tucked her helmet and gauntlets away and walked up to the control room with her nanny.

  “Warm up, then have a midday meal and then we’ll have our lesson.”

  While Olga did her exercises, Arina opened the communication with Earth. Mikhail Petrov, yawning, blinked on the large screen.

  “With your day and night period, I can never get enough time to sleep … So, when shall we start?” he asked in a drowsy voice. The curator’s face was somewhat swollen and his mustache was askew. Looking at him, Olga couldn’t suppress a laugh. But with a glance from her nanny, the girl instantly fell silent and continued to exercise intensely.

  “I want Olga to stretch a quarter billion molecules in a nanoconductor within one hundred forty minutes,” Arina said.

  “A quarter billion?” Petrov repeated, still drowsy. “If the error rate doesn’t exceed four point five, that’ll be a fine result. Only Watanabe from House Five could do this exercise at such an age.”

  Petrov turned away from the screen. The muffled scraps of a conversation could be heard before the curator returned to the control room.

  “Arina, you’ll object again, but management demands that I use electrical shock stimulation for this exercise. I know—”

  “I fully agree.”

  Olga, offended, glanced at Arina with her gray eyes.

  “Really? It’s not like you at all …” Petrov muttered.

  Olga tried to whisper something to the nanny, but Arina didn’t look at the girl.

  “I think the electric shock stimulation will be necessary if we intend to exceed Watanabe,” she said. “He’s a very serious opponent, extremely disciplined.”

  “Excellent. Feed Olga, and in the meantime I’ll fix up some coffee.” The display went black.

  “This isn’t fair! I’m not a little girl anymore and don’t need to be tortured by electricity. And who’s Watanabe?”

  Olga stamped her foot, frowning with her arms folded across her chest. Her nanny remained unperturbed by this resolute gesture. She leaned toward Olga and flicked her on the nose.

  “Well, we’ll check your readiness now, my dear speed racer. As for Watanabe, he is your colleague from High House Five. A very gifted young man, and he never fails to do his homework.”

  Arina poured cappuccino into a small cup with the inscription captain olga. Then she solemnly set down the cutting board with sushi.

  “This is real tuna from my special supplies. The coffee and cream as well. I hope these expensive delicacies will sharpen your mind. The exercise you will do today is extremely important. Docking a spaceship doesn’t compare to it in either importance or sophistication. That is why I’ve been stricter today than usual. Are we making peace?”

  Olga squinted at the sushi and sighed. “Yes, peace. Excuse me for neglecting my homework. I’ll never disobey you again.”

  “You’re forgiven as usual. Now eat while I adjust the seat.”

  Olga adroitly worked the chopsticks, watching as her nanny checked the operator seat, switched on the red lighting, and shut the porthole.

  “Are you ready, Raven?”

  “Just a minute!” The girl hurriedly sipped the coffee, her eyes flashing with excitement.

  Olga finished drinking and rushed from the table to the operator seat. The armchair reclined, and the girl swiftly connected the numerous cables to the reception bracelets on her wrists. Then she put the contact band on her head.

  “Signal delivered, no interference, equipment ready for operation,” Olga said, her voice both bored and pleased with the habitual ceremony of these words.

  One by one in the dark of the control room, the weightless green displays came on and hovered in the air. Complex charts blossomed from them, and a string of orange lines stretched from wall to wall. Flickering along the lines were columns of figures, Cyrillic and Latin characters and Mandarin characters. Another second and all the figures were replaced by zeros. The check was over. The digital columns disappeared, the displays returned to emptiness, leaving three numbered red lines forming a triangle that crossed the room from end to end. Olga carefully examined these perfectly straight beams of red light, then turned to Arina.

  “Let’s start, shall we?”

  “In a minute and a half, at two sharp. I’m enabling the electric sensors,” the nanny said with an approving nod.

  The pinpoint contact heads, sadly familiar to Olga, rose from
the wide armrests. She pressed her hands to them. The girl’s face stiffened.

  “We are ready,” Arina said.

  “Good,” Petrov responded. “Olga, thanks to your toys you know the principle of volumetric Tetris. Using the components you have, you must put together a very long chain conductor based on a model manufactured specifically for this lesson. You can check your work against the model as often as necessary. You’ll be tested not only for the accuracy of the component assembly but also your rate of performance …” Petrov fell silent for a moment as if wanting to add something before changing his mind. “Define a conductor.”

  “An object is having free charge carriers: charged particles capable of moving inside the object. In simpler terms, this is a wire with an electric current flowing through it,” Olga answered, equally confident and impatient.

  The holographic model of the pending assembly appeared, slowly rotating around the longitudinal axis. Olga instantly took in the entire construction without trying to memorize anything individually. Her face has gone slack, mild and at peace.

  “There’s nothing sophisticated about it,” she said. “It’s just much larger, and the restrictions applied to them are tighter.”

  The curator and the nanny silently exchanged glances.

  “Overall, that is correct,” Petrov said, picking his words carefully. “You’ve encountered things like this but on a smaller scale. Today, you must put together not an ordinary copper wire but a conductor that will simultaneously conduct electric discharges in hundreds of directions. If necessary, the strength of current can be increased or reduced. These chain conductors will make up the mainstay of the nervous system of your plant. Part of your duties will be to create, repair, and upgrade these conductors in order to control the entire production process. That’s one of the essential parts of your job, which nobody but you will be able to do!”

  Petrov wiped the sweat from his forehead. He tried to elaborate on his words, twitching his fingers to somehow explain to Olga the operating principles of the conductor.

  “Don’t worry, Uncle Misha! I understand.”

  “This part will consist of different elements, same as in building a house. You’ll have to insert each such element into the right model in a strictly determined succession. Each type of element is shaped and colored in its specific fashion just like in a game of Tetris.”

  “You don’t have to talk about toys!” Olga protested. “I’m a big girl.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Petrov,” Arina said. “In a minute, we’ll be ready for you to start the timer.”

  The nanny switched on a small lateral screen, which displayed bright three-dimensional figures rotating on a black background.

  “Let’s have another look at the elements you’ll be working with. Identify them.”

  “Fe for iron, Cu for copper, H for hydrogen, C for carbon, Si for silicon, Ca for calcium, Au for gold,” Olga said.

  “Excellent, Raven. You’ll have one hundred forty minutes to perform the task. Note that copper and silicon are the most common and gold the least. You must not combine hydrogen with silicon or gold with carbon. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  “The important aspect of this training assignment is that you’ll be working exclusively with the neuro-interface, with a direct connection to the Matrix at the depth level consciousness expansion mode employed by all modern astronauts. I’m sure you won’t have any problems with it. You’ve already experienced the deep mode, though briefly. And you know the temporal flow compression function.”

  “The neuro-interface doesn’t inconvenience me at all. I enjoy working in the Matrix directly. There’s nothing to distract me. Thought and action in a pure form!”

  “Petrov, prepare component package number one and set the timer,” Arina said.

  The large holographic assembly model disappeared, and only three red axes of the test remained. On Arina’s command, a light movement of Olga’s fingers raised, from the darkness on her right, a small copy of a large sample that had vanished moments before. The conductor resembled a very long triangular prism consisting of the seven elements interconnected at different angles. With a glance, the girl rotated the model and surveyed it from all sides. Then she zoomed in on the flat end of the prism with a tenfold magnification, noting to herself the traces of force and directions of the current at the individual portions of the conductor.

  “Let’s go,” Olga said to herself, enabling the neuro-interface.

  For a millionth of a second, Olga’s consciousness died before reviving to a new condition. Now her mind and nervous system, infinitely expanded by the Matrix, were at one with the central computer. The time flow decelerated, seconds stretched out endlessly.

  Her consciousness broke down to a multitude of separate elements, like reflections in an endless row of mirrors. Each of these parts and copies of Olga worked independently on its specific task, obeying a single impulse—to create order. Now Olga could visualize hundreds of thousands of parameters of the sophisticated conductor, each and every one individually and all together at a moment of time. A multitude of tasks arose and was instantly resolved. Olga gave thousands of orders simultaneously without using the screens, keyboards, or even her voice. Even still the girl did not lose contact with the outer world. She could clearly understand what Mikhail or Arina were saying, and she quietly and fluently answered their questions without stopping her work. Olga’s body was completely immobile, her breathing decelerated, and her eyes looked unseeingly at three red straight lines shining in the void.

  The adults watched as a Fe atom emerged as if from nowhere and placed itself at the very beginning of the first line. It was followed by an H atom, which took its place on second line, bonding with the iron. A copper atom settled on the third line, bonding with iron and hydrogen and closing the triangle. Those were followed at a rapidly growing rate by new components.

  Time passed. Arina sat as still as Olga, watching her little ward work. The three thin lines gradually picked up new elements. Several times the assembly model briefly popped up and almost instantly vanished.

  From time to time, Olga shuddered as she received strong electric shocks but each time the girl swiftly corrected herself and the number of errors gradually decreased.

  With 1:20:01 remaining, the chain already consisted of one hundred and ten million elements. After working for nearly an hour and a half, Olga took a short timeout breaking the connection. She took a dropper from Arina and moistened her eyes with the liquid, applied some antiseptic to her palms, adjusted the contact band, took several gulps of hot chocolate, and returned to work.

  “Are you tired, Raven?” Arina asked. “You find it hard?”

  “Just a little, but I’ll cope all right,” Olga assured her.

  0:57:12. More and more new elements attached to the red lines, interconnecting in clusters of two and three and more figures forming a complex, comprehensible to operator only array of combined elements at a mean rate of thirty thousand pieces per second. An ordinary human would perceive nothing but a blur but Arina, whose built-in clock calibrated to a millionth second, could see Olga assembling the elements in the correct combinations for each specific portion of the entire chain.

  0:02:49. The chain was practically gathered. Despite the Matrix, which cut off the operator’s brain from all unwanted emotions and external physical irritants, including her body, Olga was noticeably tired. She panted as if finishing a marathon race. Drops of sweat appeared under the contact band, but the girl continued to shoot elements at the target.

  “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. Exercise over!” Petrov raised his thumb.

  The red lines disappeared. Olga switched off the neuro-interface, tore the tiresome band from her head, disconnected the bracelets, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and took a few gulps of mineral water. The holographic image of the construction she had just pieced together emerged in front of her. But now it had no auxiliary red lines. The model ro
tated slowly, allowing them to study it from all sides. Arina intently examined the chain, stopping its rotation by her look when necessary.

  “Uncle Misha, how’s that?” Olga asked, ignoring the noise from unseen observers surrounding her curator down on Earth.

  “We’ll start checking the parameters … You’ve used the right number of elements, that’s clear. Now we must check the electric conductivity. Let’s start!”

  Olga sat rigidly, awaiting the results. Arina silently rose from the chair and took her by the hand.

  “Calm down. You’ve done a great job,” the nanny whispered.

  “Diagnostics complete! The model is suited for practical use; the error rate is seven point two percent! In future operations, the interference of this particular model can be rectified by extra adjustment. That’s the subject of the next instruction. Evaluation of the exercise—‘good.’ Well done, Raven! That’s a smart girl!” Petrov was practically hopping up and down in his chair. “Pity you couldn’t overtake the Japanese fellow; he made less than three percent errors. Never mind! That’s your first major assembly. Have a rest now. So long, Arina!”

  Olga sighed softly and made a wry face. She stretched, expecting praise from her nanny.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll catch him,” Arina said, embracing her ward. “I’m very glad for you!”

  For some time, they stood silently, embracing each other. The lessons would end soon. The final exam was coming. Then the real work would follow. Olga did a handstand, holding herself upside-down for several beats before turning a somersault.

  “Are you preparing for admission to the Russian circus?”

  “No. I just show that I’ve got the strength left for a good motor race. Will you keep me company, nanny? We haven’t raced together for quite some time, eh?”